As Service-oriented Architectures (SOA)

Today, the Web is increasingly used as a platform for distributed services, which transcend organizational boundaries to form federated applications. Consequently, there is a growing interest in the architectural aspect of Web-based systems, i.e. the composition of the overall solution into individual Web applications and Web services from different parties. The design and evolution of federated systems calls for models that give an overview of the structural as well as trust-specific composition and reflect the technical details of the various accesses. We introduce the WebComposition Architecture Model (WAM) as an overall modeling approach tailored to aspects of highly distributed systems with federation as an integral factor.

Among the various aspects of Web applications that are subject to modeling, like navigation, interaction or business processes, the architectural aspect is receiving growing attention. This is related to the fact that the Web is increasingly used as a platform for distributed services which transcend organizational boundaries to form so-called federated applications. In this context, we use the term "architecture" to denote the composition of the overall solution into individual Web applications and Web services that belong to different parties and invoke each other. The design and evolution of such systems calls for models that give an overview of the federation structure and reflect the technical details of the various accesses. We introduce the WebComposition Architecture Model (WAM) as an overall modeling approach tailored to aspects of highly distributed systems with federation as an integral factor.

Abstract. The content of many innovative Web sites today often originates from beyond the application. This paper is concerned with building Web applications that heavily integrate and link content from external sources, like e.g. Web services or RSS feeds. Unlike conventional applications, they are characterized by a very dynamic and distributed information space. In this context, traditional Web Engineering approaches suffer from the fact that they rely too much on a-priori knowledge of existing content structures. We present a support system and a method for building such applications in a very flexible way. Flexibility is achieved by managing links separately from the content in a dedicated Web service and by composing the application from fine-grained, reusable components that realize navigation, presentation, and interaction for the linked content.

Abstract:Through the advancement in technology and the spreading of the internet, a wide range of different application types has evolved. To cope with the increased complexity of today's Web-based systems, approaches facilitating development, operations and evolution of these heterogeneous and distributed systems are vital. The approach, presented in this contribution, is based on a dedicated information model allowing the description of the overall system and its components characteristics. At runtime, the relevant model information is processed and provided to different in the system's lifecycle involved stakeholders and supports them to fulfill their activities. Due to this use in terms of orientation and guidance, our approach is called the Integrated Information Map (i²map). Furthermore, the descriptive information regarding the nominal status and behavior of the components is used for automated monitoring and testing to assure the quality of the overall system at deployment and throughout operations.